The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Selfies will be used on credit applications
New Visa platform to let banks use variety of anti-fraud biometrics.
NEW YORK — The selfie is everywhere — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter — and soon your bank could be asking for one to approve your purchase or credit card application.
Payment processing giant Visa is launching a platform to allow banks to integrate various types of biometrics — your fingerprint, face, voice, etc. — into approving credit card applications and payments.
Consumers could experience Visa’s new platform in several different ways. If a person were to apply for a credit card application on a smartphone, the bank app could ask the applicant to take a selfie and then take a picture of a driver’s license or passport. The technology would then compare the photos for facial similarities as well as check the validity of the driver’s license, all happening within seconds.
The selfie also could play a role in an online purchase. With the wider acceptance of chip cards in the last couple of years, in-person fraud at retailers is on the decline. But online fraud is still a concern, with as many as one of six transactions being declined due to suspicious activity, according to Mark Nelsen, senior vice president for risk and authentication products at Visa.
Instead of a bank autodialing a customer when it has concerns about a transaction, this new technology could allow the customer to use Apple’s Touch
ID or other fingerprint recognition technology, or take a selfie or record his or her voice, to verify the customer made the transaction.
The announcement comes at a time when a huge amount of personal information on 145.5 million Americans was recently accessed or stolen from the credit bureau Equifax. The information — birthdates, Social Security numbers, addresses, last names — also could be used tomorrow or 20 years from now to potentially commit identity fraud.
Financial companies are particularly interested in biometrics, not surprisingly, as mostly a fraud protection measure. While a birthdate, Social Security number or last name can be more
easily stolen or mimicked — as anyone who has been a victim of identity fraud will tell you — it’s much harder to fraudulently mimic a person’s face, fingerprint or voice.
A bank’s traditional defense against stolen personal data has been a customer creating a password or four-digit personal identification number. But few people change their passwords regularly, or often use the same password for multiple sites, so if it’s stolen from one location, other locations can become affected.
“Traditional methods for authenticating a customer can create frustration or are simply not designed for the new ways people are shopping and paying,” Nelsen said.